> If anyone has suggestions how to prepare for this in advance, let me know.

Backup your phone to cloud storage prior to travel, wipe it, hand border agents a nearly empty phone, restore once across the border.

Doing that right means having a second cloud account (Google/Apple), or you'll still be handing them a logged-in phone.

(If your phone looks suspiciously empty or has a weird account, you might as well have said "no", that phone will be taking an extra detour.)

What happens if one has no Google or social media accounts (although I have an Android phone, I have neither—I've never set up an account on the phone)?

It seems to me these days if one doesn't have any such accounts one's likely to be singled out as being suspect or suspicious.

Beware if newer, an empty phone may qualify for an import tax.

Not everything can be backed up to the cloud these days. Banking apps, for instance, (understandably) like to use secure storage, so at the very least you will need to do a 2FA handshake all over again, which can be very painful when you are abroad.

This. It's super painful and time-confusing restoring all apps ... even with proper backups.

Use a burner. I think a lot of US citizens traveling to China use burners.

Beheading videos are illegal?

Why?

I believe they have journalistic value.

I don't think they're illegal, but journalism aside, they may at times be suggestive of a terroristic inclination. It will raise further red flags. They can however lie to you that the possession is illegal and detain you for it, even though it's legal as per the First Amendment, and no jury will find you guilty if you quote the First Amendment in your defense, except in the event of a Supreme Court precedent against such possession.

Some countries like NZ and Australia do ban content that is violence and censor it despite journalistic value. They recently tried to force X to ban footage of a stabbing globally for all users, and Musk said no luckily.

It's shocking how much censorship we have these days in the world. "For our safety", except it's not, it's for the reduction of freedom since freedom is noise and noise in 0.001% of cases can generate unsafety.

Murder videos should be treated like child porn. Insane that they're not.

Edit: haha that downvote was quick. I was downvoted on here last time I said that too. You know I'm right though.

Great, another excuse to arrest people who film or share videos of police violence. Also, a good excuse to erase evidence of war crimes.

Make someone a criminal for simply holding evidence of a crime. Genius.

You were downvoted last time because it's still a shit idea.

Yes. Children are victims. They are re-victimized when the videos are shared. Perverts sharing them encourages more to be produced. Same thing with murder videos and animal torture videos.

> They are re-victimized when the videos are shared

> Same thing with murder videos

Philosophically, can a dead person be re-victimized?

Families have become victims of harassment when weirdos have sent images to them of their dead family member.

Most people would be offended if I pissed on their mother's grave.

Let's say they can't be re-victimized and their families aren't new victims. There's still the argument that it encourages more killings.

I believe that videos like the Christchurch massacre should be banned. That video was made by the murderer and I'm sure was intended to bring fear to that community and encourage more acts of violence by other murderous weirdos.

A surveillance video or a video made by a victim or bystander is different. I don't think those videos should necessarily be shared, but if they're not made by the perpetrator or shared to try to bring support to the preparator, then yeah it's probably newsworthy. Still, the victims' families should be taken into consideration. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be scrolling through Twitter and come across a video of someone you know being murdered.

> Still, the victims' families should be taken into consideration. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be scrolling through Twitter and come across a video of someone you know being murdered.

Maybe so, but I don't want you in charge of determining my feelings on the matter, and I want to be subject to your censorious ideas even less. We may agree on many things, but inevitably we'll disagree on others and then my life becomes worse because of your judgement. Just leaving it alone is probably the least harmful thing.

If you are arguing for the banning of sharing of videos of murder created by the murderer, then your initial comparison to CP is off.

In any case, the general idea of banning access to and possession or distribution of evidence of crime creates an insane power imbalance that I don't think can ever be justified, unfortunately, by the obviously extremely unfortunate things you mention above.

CP is evidence of a crime and possession of it is illegal. Are you saying that CP should be legal?

> Families have become victims of harassment when weirdos have sent images to them of their dead family member.

.. and people have been shot dead by guns.

Many people feel that these are arguments for 'banning' (making illegel) harrassment and murder rather than videos and guns.

Videos of violent crimes that were filmed by the perpetrator of that crime should be illegal to distribute. Perjury is illegal. Judges limit what people can say about ongoing trials. There are all kinds of restrictions on speech. It's ok if this is one of them.

As a non-citizen, I don't think you have enough rights to really fight back, and you could risk upsetting a petty border agent who may decide to 'punish' you and maybe deny entry.

Thankfully I've learned to back up and wipe devices before travel and then only restore after landing.

Don’t go to the US and go to a more welcoming country instead.

Rather silly advice. Sometimes one has no choice about their destination. Secondly, many countries now apply these grotesque little petty tyranny laws. Canada does, for example, and many people consider it "welcoming". Better practical advice, ad maybe also activism than depending on a possibly shrinking list of supposedly "nice" governments.

You always have a choice. You can choose not to go. If someone asks you to go you can say no. If they don’t take no for an answer then you can lie to them. Just say you can’t get an ESTA, there are many innocuous reasons such as visiting Cuba.

It’s true that Five Eyes countries are in general not very welcoming but the US is certainly the most unpleasant to enter.

The Five Eyes border agents may not be welcoming. Once you’re through that hurdle, they’re plenty welcoming.

>You always have a choice. You can choose not to go.

Of course, you can physically restrain yourself from going to X or Y unpleasant major country, but go ahead and tell someone rushing urgently to such a country for the funeral or medical emergency of a family member, or a serious financial emergency, that they can just "choose not to go" as if it were a case of choosing what toilet paper to buy.

That's idiotic. They are wasting time harassing people, and searching physical devices for material that can be easily transmitted between any two internet-connected points on the planet. The "bad guys" they are trying to bust will do exactly that.

It's like still doing body searches for drugs when remote matter replicators have become ubiquitous.

Unless they are installing spyware

Mail yourself an encrypted SSD with your data.

This is why I have my old iPhone as a dedicated travel phone. No way am I going to let officials rifle through my real phone looking for sensitive information or private photos. Especially out of sight!

With my travel phone, I always assume everything I put on there is public info. If I lose my phone, no big deal, just an annoyance.

Are you American?